craigdailypress.com

When the snow near his property melted a few weeks ago, Paul Towner had what looked like a river of mud running through his yard.

The filthy flow left more than a foot of mud in Towner's dog pen and buried his back lawn and sprinkler heads.

"I'm going to have to do a lot, a lot, of work," Towner said last week as he surveyed the damage to his yard.

Towner blames the mud on R & S Tong Service, which is leveling the ground and moving mountains of dirt behind his home in Shadow Mountain subdivision.

R & S has a fleet of oil rig service trucks that serve energy developers throughout the region.

The company is leveling the property, which is on Moffat County Road 7, to build a warehouse and office.

Towner and Moffat County officials say that when the company started work, they didn't take the proper steps to direct the runoff away from Towner's property.

The company started moving dirt before dealing with storm-water runoff, Moffat County Planner Ben Crippen said.

"They went about it backwards," Crippen said.

Now, in part because of the damage to Towner's property, the county won't issue a subdivision permit to R & S.

County commissioners tabl--ed discussion of a subdivision permit for the company last week.

R & S was based at a home in the Thompson Hill subdivision south of town until last summer, when commissioners told the company to move their business out of the residential neighborhood.

Robert Howsey, the owner of R & S, said he has every intention of getting the runoff system up to code at the property on County Road 7.

"We're going to build this thing right," Howsey said.

Work on the project is a few months behind schedule, Howsey said, in part because of a family emergency during the summer.

If work were on schedule, there would have been a water runoff system in place in time for this spring, Howsey said.

Another problem has been people off-roading at the construction site, Howsey said. The property had a small runoff system in place that Howsey thought would work this spring, but a teenager drove a truck on the property and ruined it, he said.

Howsey said if his company caused the damage to Towner's property, he would fix it.

"I will have his place looking better than it did," Howsey said.

In the meantime, Towner is waiting for the next runoff and keeping his two dogs in the garage.

"They're outside dogs," Tow--ner said. "They don't like it in there."

Brandon Johansson can be reached at 824-7031, ext. 213, or bjohansson@craigdailypress.com.